Thursday, May 11, 2017

Curtains for Aurora

And so, the BBC's radical new approach to technology contracting has ended up with the principal office nuts and bolts supplier being - Atos.

Yes Atos, who've been running the BBC's previously fully-outsourced deal since 2011, when the French-based company took over the German-based Siemens IT division and their existing contract with the BBC. It was supposed to end in March 2015, but Atos were given an extra two years to allow for the protracted tendering process of Project Aurora, which has been running publicly since February 2014 shining new light on how to make procurement ponderous. A shortlist of three companies was made in October last year.

The announcement of a new Atos contract, to provide laptops, phones, business applications, hosting services and a technology helpdesk, comes two months late. At least there'll be no need for yet another transition team, will there ?